Background When supply chains froze up during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a rude awakening for many living in North America and Europe how dependent their economies were on critical products being produced in Asia ranging from PPE to microchips. COVID also accelerated the political and economic tensions that had...
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In the 18th episode of the Statistically Insignificant podcast, Jaryd and I discuss the economic rationale behind the carbon tax in Canada, debunk some popular economic misconceptions about it, and analyze why it has become increasingly unpopular and is likely to be scrapped in the next election. Even with hindsight...
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As I sat through many of the workshops and plenary sessions at the 2023 North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference (NACFC) I couldn’t help but notice the upbeat energy of the conference. Having just read Bijal Travedia’s majestic history Breath from Salt about the history of cystic fibrosis (CF), it made...
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In the 17th episode of the Statistically Insignificant podcast, Erik and Jaryd are joined by Seth Kitamura a jazz musician based out of Vancouver BC. We discuss what it’s like to study jazz in music school, how artists in this field make a living, and the jazz lineage. Seth plays...
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In the 16th episode of the Statistically Insignificant podcast, Erik and Jaryd have a 1:1 conversation reflecting on what they’ve learned since the start of the Covid pandemic. The guys reflect on why they should have taken more vacations, whether single-payer is likely to be sustainable as a healthcare model,...
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This post contains eight univocalic poems (four As, three Es, and one I). This type of poetic constraint requires that only a single vowel be used throughout the entire poem. These poems emulate the style of Christian Bök’s Eunoia. I adhere to the following rules: i) “y” is treated as...
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One of the annoying things my wife and I discovered when sending out wedding invitations via email was that many of the emails were categorized as junk. Specifically, this was caused by having a mass BCC email. For events where you don’t want individuals to see who is invited, there...
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In the 15th episode of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by Rachel McMullan, an Osteoarchaeologist by training with an expertise in Near Eastern and Classical archaeology. In this fascinating conversation, Rachel talks about her career in archaeology, why digs are more pleasant in England than Canada,...
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In the 14th episode of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by Albert Tam who works as a Data & Risk Management Professional. In this interesting conversation, Albert explains the principles that underlie the risk management framework and how this is used in practice. We also discuss...
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I have become accustomed to my book purchase recommendations being politely declined by my local library. There is only so much room on the stacks for a monetary history of China, alas. I was therefore pleasantly surprised when my request for Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes by Barnaby Phillips...
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In the 13th episode of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by Elizabeth Cook who works as an Economist and Policy Analyst at the Department of Finance in Ottawa. Elizabeth is an expert in tax policy. In this interesting conversation Jaryd and Erik receive a crash course...
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The mental image most people hold of military conflicts is one of battlefield carnage. This picture is misleading. Most casualties of war are civilians rather than soldiers. For soldiers that do die, they are more likely to have been killed by disease rather than combat. Indeed, before the 20th century,...
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In episode 12 Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by Joshua Zachariah, an economist who works at the Brookfield Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a think tank, in Toronto, Canada. Joshua’s main research interest is in better understanding how gains from the innovation economy can be more equitably...
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In episode 11 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by our friend Steve Bank for a wide ranging discussion philosophy, economics, politics, and much more. Intellectually peripatetic, Steve takes us on a journey through many domains during this interesting conversation.
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There are a handful of authors whose works have the feeling of being sui generis. I have in mind El Greco’s psychedelic paintings, Mervyn Peake’s gothic flights of fancy, or Italo Calvino’s post-modern fairy tales as examples. Surely C.P. Cavafy[1] deserves to be on the list as well. No description...
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Book #1: The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff I found reading about Conrad much more interesting than actually reading Conrad. Maya Jasanoff’s The Dawn Watch (2017) is a fascinating intersection between literary biography and history. As a historian at Harvard, Jasanoff’s work strikes the right balance between popular reading and...
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Though published only four years ago in 2017, Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa by Lawrence James already feels dated. While authors do not get to choose the subtitles of their books, this one is nevertheless revealing. The use of the word “struggle” suggests that...
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In the 10th episode Statistically Insignificant podcast, Jaryd and I are joined by Megan DeVries - a Policy Analyst with Natural Resources Canada. We talk to Megan about her experiencing working in a political capacity as well as the civil service. Megan also provides us with some fascinating insights into...
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Enrico Moretti is a celebrated and influential economist whose research has focused on the intersection of labour and urban economics. When I was studying economics, Hsieh and Moretti’s seminal paper on the economic inefficiencies stemming from high housing prices were important in informing my world view. Their paper showed that...
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As I have not had time to write many full-length book reviews this year, I am continuing with my brief reviews of some selected reads. Unfortunately, 2021 is not producing as many high quality reads as last year. However, regression to towards the mean suggests that the next two quarters...
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In episode 9 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by Cory Matthews (@coryfmatthews) a Real Estate Investor and Realtor with Lifestyle Homes. This episode is 100% about the Canadian housing market. Cory discusses some of the market’s issues and highlights vulnerabilities that buyers and investors should...
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Overview I have wanted to read Alain Bertaud’s book Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities for quite some time. I first heard about Alain after he appeared on Econtalk and Conversations with Tyler several years ago. Although I stopped working as a housing economist five years ago, I have...
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Introduction As someone who has to frequently change which projects they are working on, I am often in sympathy with (The Honourable) Chrystia Freeland who is continually given more and more portfolios in the Trudeau government. Anything that is considered mission critical gets put into her hands: dealing with Western...
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Though COVID has crashed the world economy and killed millions, it has also given many of us more time for reading. I’ve written short reviews for some of the books I’ve read since September 2020. Book #1: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel I first heard about Emily...
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In episode 8 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by my good friend Eric Mackay, a Senior Statistician at Cytel. Eric has an academic background in econometrics and statistics, as well as extensive professional expertise in applied biostatistical analysis. We cover a variety of topics including...
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There is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Adam Smith Toronto is Canada’s cultural and economic capitol. The city contains 16% of the country’s population, 20% of the its GDP, and 25% of its net job creation. For a young aspiring professional, like myself, moving to Toronto was...
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Lewis Nkosi once said that Chinua Achebe has paid a “high price … for being Africa’s greatest indigenous novelist.” Achebe’s African Trilogy is certainly the “defining” literary account of the colonial encounter between British imperialism and traditional societies. Arrow of God is Achebe’s third novel after Things Fall Apart and...
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Note: I have a technical accompanying post on my other website which analyses trends in Canadian cancer statistics. The history of medicine is intimately linked to the study of cancer. Theodor Boveri’s finding that chromosome damage can cause uncontrolled cell proliferation and Peyton Rous’ discovery of a sarcoma virus were...
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Canadian history is boring and peaceful. Or so the stereotype goes. Northern Armageddon puts paid to this idea. Written by D. Peter MacLeod, the Director of Research at the Canadian War Museum, the book tells how modern Canada was born of military conflict stemming from great power rivalry. The boundary...
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In episode 7 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I interview Jasmine Knox, a Production Manager, and an expert on the theatre industry in Toronto. We learn from Jasmine the many challenges that the theatre has experienced since the onset of COVID-19 along with what it is like to...
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John A: The Man Who Made Us is the first volume of Richard Gwyn’s comprehensive biography of Canada’s first prime minister. Though books on Sir John A abound, Gwyn’s accessible account of his life is seen a predecessor to the two volume work of Creighton in the 1950s. This first...
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Background Seventeen African countries achieved independence in the year 1960. Among this list was Nigeria, the continent’s most populated country and the regional leader of West Africa. The disintegration of the British and French empires happened faster than almost anyone would have predicted five years before. Though each country’s post-independence...
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The Globe & Mail recently published an op-ed by Dr. Josh Gordon, in which he argues that only “cheap credit, foreign ownership, speculation and high rental demand” can explain the significant housing price increases observed in Toronto and Vancouver since 2010. Dr. Gordon and I agree about one thing: demand...
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Book #1: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Adichie’s second acclaimed novel, Half a Yellow Sun, lives up to its praise. The story follows the Ozobia family and their intimate connections throughout Nigeria’s tumultuous post-independence history. The novel begins in the early 1960s just after the country...
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The relationship between housing policy and the macroeconomy has become more important for economists to study as the costs of spatial misallocation have become increasingly clear. For a middle class family, a poorly functioning housing market results in underhousing. My own story is a good example of this phenomenon. Despite...
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At the end of The Spoilt City Harriet Pringle finds herself alone in Athens having fled Romania after the anti-British Antonescu regime took power and deposed Carol II. Her husband, Guy Pringle, has been left virtually alone in Romania to represent the British Commission. As she walks around the city...
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The Spoilt City is the second book in the Balkan Trilogy and continues the story of Guy and Harriet Pringle; a recently married couple living a precarious existence in supposedly neutral Romania in 1940. The interpersonal drama that began in the first novel grows more taut as Guy and Harriet...
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Anyone who reads Italo Calvino will appreciate that his style is both original and difficult to describe. There are certainly elements of the fabulous and absurd. Yet the author’s style also evolved over time. His first novel, The Path to the Spider’s Nest (1947) was written in the neorealist mode,...
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Starting Africa Since Independence is equivalent to jumping into the deep end of the pool for a neophyte learning about contemporary African history. The book is more than 600 pages with a small font size and ten pages dedicated to keeping track of political abbreviations. Given the book’s length, it...
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My first introduction to Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War cycle was the well-made TV series with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. Though I usually do not read a book if I have already seen the film adaptation of, I was glad I made the exception for The Great Fortune.[1] In...
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Chinua Achebe’s influence on African literature cannot be overstated. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, tells the story of first cultural contact between pre-colonial Igbo society and British imperial power in the late 19th century. His next two books followed the same community as they struggled with the contradictions and...
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I am generally a fan of sweeping history narratives so I was willing to give John Iliffe’s Africans: The History of a Continent a chance. Coming in at a tidy 315 pages plus references, the book was published in 2017 as part of the African Studies Series from Cambridge University...
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Upon completing Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild it dawned on me that many of my favourite books are in the form of narrative history. A review of the books that I have given five stars to on Goodreads confirms this: Beyond Hitler’s Grasp (Bar-Zohar), Return of a King (Dalrymple),...
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In episode 6 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I have a wide ranging discussion about the 2020 Tory Leadership Race and other issues around Canadian politics and international affairs. The episode highlight is surely when Jaryd uses his inductive skills to accurately map all campaign slogans to candidates...
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I went into reading The Name of the Rose with high expectations both because I had enjoyed one of Eco’s other works (Baudalino) and because the novel is considered one of the author’s best. It did not disappoint. Eco’s writing style is similar to two of my other favourite authors:...
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Book #1: Cigars of the Pharaoh by Hergé I have fond if hazy memories of reading all of my father’s Tintin comics as a kid. My impression was that Tintin was a sophisticated and fresh-faced looking youth who got to travel the world solving crimes and occasionally shooting a pistol....
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Background Throughout most of human history poverty has been the rule rather than the exception. Even as of 1980, close to 90% of humanity lived in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day). The last forty years of globalization and development has led to an amazing reversal in world history...
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Book #1: Wicked by Gregory Maguire In L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the novel begins with Dorothy’s house being swept up in a tornado and happening to fall in the Land of Oz and crushing the Wicked Witch of the East. Treated a liberator by the locals,...
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A seaman should be understood to be quite different from all other classes of men, he does not spring up like a Mushroom, it requires many years to make him a seaman, with fatigue both of body and mind. (Henry Bayntum) The British self-image is that of an “Island Race”...
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Christian Bök is one of my favourite poets. I first became aware of his work with Eunoia, which is a critically-acclaimed collection of univocalic poems: each chapter uses only a single vowel. The work is a masterpiece and took Bök many years to write. Each chapter manages to focus on...
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King Ferdinand I and Boris III of Bulgaria both had the misfortune of having to decide which alliance to support in a world war. Despite their different personalities and motivations both men decided to back the Germans. King Boris was a naturally shy man, and unlike his father he preferred...
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Book #1: Indian Tales by Rudyard Kipling Being the Bard of Empire has proven a long-run liability for Kipling’s enduring appeal among modern audiences. As someone who has a fairly high tolerance and moderate nostalgia for Pax Britannica, even I find some of Kipling’s verse cringe worthy. One of his...
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Given the brutality of war in any era its hard to argue that there was ever a gentlemanly period of armed conflict. Yet if there was to be one, the 18th century could lay a decent claim. During the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745, the Grenadier guards and the French...
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Book #1: Border by Kapka Kassabova Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe is a poetic travelogue which starts in Bulgaria and makes it way through Greece and Turkey. This area of Southeastern Europe is described as a magical place, with witches, mysterious treasures in Thracian tombs, and ghostly...
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In episode 5 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I are joined by Lauren Erdman who is a PhD student with the Goldenberg Lab at SickKids hospital. Lauren provides an overview of how machine learning is helping to assist physicians in pediatric medicine. We cover a range of other...
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In episode 4 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast I am joined by Karina Isaev who works as a computational biologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. Karina provides an excellent overview of her research topics and their relevance to cancer biology. Show notes Karina’s academic publications can be found on...
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Before traveling abroad I like to prepare myself for the countries I will be visiting by reading about the place either in history or fiction. In the case of Germany and Austria I found it useful to read some of the classical literature including Kleist, Effi Briest, Mann, and Hesse....
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As I have only been reviewing a small fraction of the books I have been reading in the last several years, I am going to start aggregating multiple book reviews into short blurbs summarizing my thoughts and key takeaways. Book #1: The Circle by Dave Eggers Dave Egger’s bibliography is...
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If you are looking for a book that will celebrate the Great Minds of History, Clifford Connor’s A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks is not the book for you. Another warning: those who want to maintain their admiration for Tycho Brahe will want to make sure...
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In episode 3 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast, Jaryd and I are joined by a special guest Phil Fradkin has is an expert in computational biology and genetics. We discuss how machine learning techniques are being leveraged by industry to used to identify novel therapeutic candidates. This avenue of research...
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The problem with writing a “concise” history on any topic is a matter of granularity. How much can an author expect the reader to know about the topic at hand? Will the reader want to know more about the history of the topic or its contemporary politics? Daniel Gordis’ Israel:...
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I bought Brian Lee Crowley’s Fearful Symmetry because I was enticed by the positive review blurbs (the cover was fairly disappointing) that came from very serious people from the Globe and Mail and National Post.[1] The additional promise of learning from whence our “founding values” came and thither they went...
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In episode 2 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I discuss a variety of statistical topics including methods to adjust for multiple hypothesis testing, the winner’s curse, the reproducability crisis, the garden of forking paths, and much more!. I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading...
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During the 2015 Canadian Election campaign an innocent-seeming Justin Trudeau promised a different type of politics, one of “sunny ways”. This remark helped to contrast the young Trudeau’s leadership style to the seemingly dour and cold Prime Ministership of Stephen Harper. Four years later the sun had been fully eclipsed...
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In episode 1 of the Statistically Insignificant podcast Jaryd and I discuss recent events in Canadian politics including the 2019 Canadian Election, Wexit, Scheer’s leadership crisis, and the redoubtable JWR.
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I have always been skeptical of proclamations concerning natural the world’s inevitable resource depletion. The loss of Paul Erlich’s $10K to Julian Simon in their famous wager has stayed with me. Most people think of resources in an engineering sense: if a car has an X gallon tank it will...
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The topic of Canadian real estate prices in the news media has been centered on the rate of house price growth in Toronto and Vancouver. In August 2016 and June 2017, Vancouver and Toronto real estate prices were growing by a year-on-year rate of 26% and 29%, respectively. As with...
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I am not sure whether Cormorant Books intended it or not, but the publication timing of Jonathan Manthorpe’s new book Claws of the Panda in January of this year was impeccable. One month before, Meng Wanzhou was arrested at YVR Airport at the request of US authorities pursuant to our...
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The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s ensured the United States would reach a level of international hegemony not seen since the time of Hadrian. Furthermore the rest of the rich world was aligned with this American world order (modulo some disagreements at the margin) and largely...
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I remember having a sense of déjà vu when I was re-reading A Study in Scarlet, the first book in the Sherlock Holmes series. Dr. Watson begins his narration by recounting his military service that ultimately led to his discharge. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and...
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It has often been remarked that any statement said in the affirmative of Churchill can be said with equal conviction in a contrary spirit. Churchill was a drunk, Churchill could handle his alcohol. Churchill was a warmonger, Churchill sought only peace. Churchill hated the working class, Churchill was a radical...
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Many of the classics of British literature published in the decade after the Second World War have come to define the epoch and its associated political, economic, and social changes: books like Lawrence Durell’s Alexandria Quartet (1957), Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945), Grahame Greene’s The End of the Affair, George...
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Why didn’t our neighbour leave that abusive man? Why did she spend her money on drugs? Why couldn’t she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter? Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbour but to my mom? It would be years before I learned...
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Jordan Peterson often reminds his passel of followers that if you think things cannot get any worse you are not being imaginative enough. At the end of the Bush presidency with the American economy hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs a month, countless civilians dead in Iraq and Afghanistan along...
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One problem with rating things on a scale from one to five or from one to ten is that an average score tends to be become associated with around a C+ or a B-. For example the subjective beauty scale usually reserves 7/10 for an average human and literary rankings...
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On the morning of November 11th, 1995 the world woke up to the headlines that the well-known environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa had been executed, along with eight other men, on the implausible charges of conspiracy to commit murder. The real reason for the execution, which was articulated by all the...
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While waiting for a lay-over flight in Reykjavik I struck up a conversation with two Germans (we were all on our way to Frankfurt). We had a pleasant talk and inevitably I told them about where I’m from (Canada), where I grew up (Vancouver), and where I live now (Toronto)....
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History books tend to be written to either a highly specialized audience or the general public. Books written to the former will use technical terms and expect the reader to be familiar with the relevant references and events (think Piketty’s Capital) whereas “popular” history books aim for the reader to...
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Just a few years before Europe was plunged into the decade long fighting of the Napoleonic Wars a collection of poems simply titled Lyrical Ballads was published in 1798 by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In contrast to the baroque style of 18th century, the Ballads provided poetry with...
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The tales of King Arthur and his legendary knights seem to show undiminished merit for every new generation of readers. For the English Romantics, the medieval period was one in which the human heart and spirit were free to pursue their noble purposes unencumbered by the dreariness of modern commercial...
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In 2002 Cardinal Bernard F. Law of the Boston Archdiocese was forced to resign amidst a growing scandal in which he was personally involved in helping to cover up decades of child abuse. While the association between the Catholic Church and child sex abuse scandals are now universally documented across...
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A weary Kublai Khan sits in his garden and asks of Marco Polo to tell him of the cities of his empire he will never visit. Polo describes to him fifty-five cities he has seen – each strange and fantastical – cities whose properties are not by bound either physics...
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Models are tools that help us to better understand and predict some aspect of the world. There is a natural appreciation that a model must be a simplification of reality in the sense that extraneous details should be excluded. The failure to impose some level of parsimony on a model...
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There is something irresistible about the octopus. In the popular imagination the octopus is associated with its tentacles, an appendage which is menacing due to its ability to contort into strange shapes, extend to unexpected lengths, and suction unsuspecting prey. To suggest anything is tentacle-like does not imply a compliment....
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The Nonexistent Knight One of reason why Calvino novels are such a delight to read is because of the way in which a simple setting and story is transformed through a fantastical reimagining. The Nonexistent Knight tells the story of Agilulf, a knight in Charlemagne’s army, who embodies the ideals...
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There are two types of Pamuk novels: his post-modernist types (My Name is Red and Snow) and his more realist-type novels (Silent House and Museum of Innocence). The Black Book belongs to the former category and is one of his best works from an artistic perspective. It contains the usual...
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After the death or resignation of the Pope, a papal conclave is called to elect a new Bishop of Rome. When white smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel the process of apostolic succession is complete and Saint Peter’s shoes have been filled.[1] Who are we to say by what mysterious...
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After unpacking some boxes today, I came across an old anthology of short stories titled Breakthrough XV: An Anthology of Student Writing (2005). I had completely forgotten that I had submitted this story and won entry in my school district’s annual publication. After reading it I was delighted by the...
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Silent House was the second novel written by Orhan Pamuk,[1] and has been recently translated to English. Pamuk is well known to Western literary audiences due to his highly-acclaimed novels My Name is Red and Snow as well as his historical-autobiographical account of his native city in the eponymously titled...
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The Distance of the Moon is the first story in Italo Calvino’s The Complete Cosmicomics, and proves an excellent ambassador for the author’s style and works. Each book in the Cosmicomics begins with an apocryphal scientific quote, although usually based on some actual scientific fact,[1] and we are given a...
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I first heard Paul Bloom’s contrarian arguments against the intrinsic moral value of empathy on Sam Harris’ podcast about a year ago. Within an hour I was sold on the idea that this a priori unassailable virtue was in need of a dressing down. I put the book on my...
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Hollywood continues to be interested in making films about the perils of AI, and Ex Machina, a 2015 sci-fi film written and directed by Alex Garland,[1] carries on this tradition. Unlike most sci-fi films though, this one was shot on a small budget ($15 million dollars) and has only three...
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Imagine that you have been invited to a dinner party by a host of only a recent acquaintanceship. Upon arrival, you find yourself seated at a resplendent table with guests equally attired to the quality of their surroundings. However when you attempt to greet your neighbour your find yourself unable...
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Introduction The Gene is Siddhartha Mukherjee’s second book following The Emperor of All Maladies[1], which won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 2011 for chronicling the history of cancer. Like his first book, The Gene seeks to tackle the whole history of the subject, which in this case means parsing...
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I knew I would not be disappointed with Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters as I had read Ridley’s previous book The Red Queen, about the biological origins of sexual reproduction with great delight. Ridley is a well-respected journalist with The Economist, and knows how to write...
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The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony is not the sort of book I would normally pick up. In fact I cannot remember the last time I got a book from the “Animals/Pets” section of any bookstore. However, one of the advantages of participating in a book club is that one...
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How did people live fulfilling lives before podcasts? Freakonomics Podcast: Gender Barriers I do not listen to the Freakonomics podcast as much as I used to as the number of episodes with both Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner has fallen off sharply as the former is an extremely busy UChicago...
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I found this ten minute speech by Dr. Reverend William Barber II to be really great so I thought it worth listening to again and transcribing it. Below I pull out the microscope and go through the speech, highlighting its best elements. Good evening my brothers and sisters. I come...
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Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, or more commonly Gulliver’s Travels, is considered to be Swift’s best book,1 which was unsurprising to discover after finishing this great work. The book tells of...
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A couple podcasts have stood out in the digest over the last 9 days. The surprising case of Queen Latifah! Outside the usual format of StarTalk, Episode 19 of Season 7 had an hour-length unedited interview between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Queen Latifah! I am not familiar with her work...
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After having seen Othello performed at Bard on the Beach, I was put in quite a Shakespearean mood and decided to pick up Dan Falk’s The Science of Shakespeare off my bookshelf. The book gives both a brief history of scientific progress during the Elizabethan/Jacobean eras in which Shakespeare lived...
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In Episode 1 of the Well Mapped Podcast Josh and I discuss his map making business, the history of maps, and philosophy of cartography. For further reading on the topic, we suggest Map Head by Ken Jennings and On the Map by Simon Garfield. Below you will also find some...
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It’s been a while since I read Othello, though I would put it in my top five of favourite Shakespeare plays for several reasons. First, the play clips along at a good pace and avoids scenes of unnecessary comic relief or a longwinded songs from the king’s fool.[1] Second, like...
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It’s been a good week for the podcast digest. Based on a recommendation from a friend, I subscribed to Malcom Gladwell’s new podcast series Revisionist History and David Axelrod’s ongoing series The Axe Files. I started with Episode 62 of the Axe Files in which David Axelrod interviewed Paul Begala,...
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Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a...
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I recently found a very handsome collection of classic children’s books published by the Vancouver Sun. In addition to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Little Women,[1] and The Hound of the Baskervilles, I picked up Verne’s classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. My memory about Verne and...
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I recently took a two-day trip to Seattle with my best friend to both claim a rightful vacation and re-kindle my love affair with the Emerald city. The trip was an important reminder to me of the purpose of travel in modern life alongside some other associated geographical and economic...
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To preface, NeuroTribes as an excellent book. I was first made aware of Steve Silberman’s work when I heard him on a Science for the People podcast (episode #345 and #367). I remember the podcasts well because the host (Rachelle Saunders) started off by asking a question and Silberman would...
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Introduction What is economics? Clearly it is what economists do. But despite this unsatisfying albeit amusing quip there is little coherence in the public or professional mind as to what exactly our métier does with all its spare time. Some would say that we are busy becoming rich or dominating...
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I recently watched two movies: The Imitation Game and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, both of which were slight disappointments for different reasons. While the former was a good movie, I felt it fell below the critical acclaim that its reviews had garnered it in my mind. Another...
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There are a few undisputed pillars upon which modern Western social opinion rests. In no particular order: [i] the supremacy of democracy as a political system,[1] [ii] marriage based on love,[2] and [iii] the pursuit of happiness as a primary human motivation in the normative sense. I believe that our...
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Informed and scientifically minded persons are generally aware that John Harrison was a man who solved the longitude problem by the use of very precise clocks in the 18th century. My first exposure to his story came from the 3-part series produced by the BBC,[1] with Harrison played by the...
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The bar was always going to be high for Lyndsey Turner’s recent production of Hamlet at the Barbican this year. In addition to the responsibility of directing a play by one of England’s three greatest men,[1] and one of the Bard’s finest works,[2] she had to provide the space in...
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The risk of reading a book written in 2004 about the biology and genetic origins of the brain, which was only a few years after the entire human genome was sequenced, is that the studies and research cited can become deprecated in a field advancing with leaps and bounds. Luckily,...
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